Volume 22 of O’Reilly Media’s MAKE Magazine is loaded with remote control projects. Everything from The Kitty Twitty by Marc de Vinck to a radio controlled lawnmower called “Lawnbot400” .

MAKE Volume 22 Remote Control / Wireless

Gareth Branwyn asked “innovators and enthusiast” from the industry what’s on their radars for his article. Since the issue was all about remote control, Gareth pinged our very own Jason Winters for his thoughts on how remote control has changed and where it’s going.

“Today, by using the internet to send control signals, range is no longer limited by transmission power. Any location with a net connection can be a potential command point.”

LaserPup is burning up the Internet. Joe of laserpup.com has created an interactive, Internet controlled and monitored pet toy, for his fluffy dog Skyler. Joe can log into an “iPhone friendly web app” that allows him to watch his dog from work, click a button to sound off a buzzer, and play with the dog using a laser pointer by clicking around his web interface. The system uses a couple of servos for x and y axis movement of the laser pointer and a few ioBridge widgets to make things work in the web app. Some dogs and cats love the laser pointer, chasing the light source all around – it’s healthy, fun exercise for pets in moderation.

When we first heard of the project, we thought this has something to do with dogs doing epic battles with lasers (nice Star Trek and ‘Skyborg’ reference, btw), but this is a very practical project. On the laserpup.com you will find a video, instructions, screen captures, and all of the de-tails to make your own Internet controlled pet toy for dogs and cats (I have to believe they will love it too). Awesome project Joe and thanks for sharing LaserPup with all of us. This YouTube video, enhanced with some Daft Punk, says the rest.